Benefits of Healthcare Data Nowadays

Just think of the benefits of a wearable medical gadget that could warn you if your routine increases your risk of acquiring diabetes. Imagine a mobile app that gives you fast, tailored medical advice based on your DNA.

Collecting and managing healthcare data is more crucial than ever because of the growing popularity of non-traditional medical services based on technology that can provide personalized health product recommendations.

However, what exactly is big data in the healthcare industry? Discover why health data is crucial and how data-driven healthcare solutions are changing the industry.

What Is Healthcare Data, and Why Is It Crucial?

“Big data” refers to large amounts of data about a specific issue. The term “big data” refers to data sets that are too large to store and manage using conventional methods. The digitization of medical records and the rapid development of medical technologies have created an environment conducive to the widespread application of big data in the healthcare sector.

Big data in healthcare comes from various places, such as patient files, hospitals’ databases, doctors’ offices, and diagnostic equipment like EKGs, X-rays, laboratory test results, and more.

What Role Does Healthcare Data Play in the Medical Field?

The healthcare sector generates vast amounts of data. Still, it has difficulty turning it into valuable insights that boost patient outcomes and efficiencies in the sector’s internal workings, where analyzing this data can be of great use. It is possible to improve every facet of patient care and healthcare administration using data analytics.

Healthcare experts can use the data in studies to look at ways to enhance illness prevention, clinical care delivery, and the evaluation of treatment outcomes. Here are some of the benefits healthcare data has to offer.

1.  Patient Outcomes Benefit from Healthcare Data

Gathering big data for medical applications has taken a lot of effort and money. Data is collected electronically and transformed into a format that anyone can read now, thanks to cutting-edge technologies. Medical experts may improve patient outcomes now in different ways by developing data-driven healthcare solutions.

  • Data-driven healthcare solutions allow patients to take an active role in their health care by providing convenient access to their medical records, helping them save money and time.
  • Doctors can evaluate therapy efficacy more quickly by keeping them updated on their patients’ health. They can use data-driven discoveries to diagnose and treat medical problems at the earliest possible stages.
  • Streamlining administrative procedures and empowering administrators to make data-informed decisions about resource allocation inside and across health institutions would increase access to high-quality medical treatment.

Why Does Patients’ Outcome Matter?

Quality improvement in healthcare aims to ensure that patients receive safe, high-quality care while experiencing as little discomfort as possible. Healthcare professionals increasingly collect and analyze patient data in real time to better comprehend today’s complex healthcare environments and apply a systematic approach to improving patient outcomes.

2.  Improving Medical Studies through Analyzing Clinical Data

Data analytics techniques advance research in many branches of medicine by compiling and analyzing clinical data from a wide range of sources. Electronic health records (EHRs), electronic medical records (EMRs), personal health records (PHRs), and public health records (PHRs) are among the most helpful sources of clinical information.

  • Electronic health records (EHRs) compile a patient’s X-rays and other medical pictures, diagnoses, treatment plans, allergies, and test results into a single digital file. This facilitates communication but also brings about privacy and legal compliance restrictions that restrict the data’s potential applications.
  • Electronic health records (EHRs) are similar to EMRs. However, EMRs only incorporate data from the patient’s paper charts maintained in medical facilities like doctors’ offices and clinics. Their primary significance lies in documenting a patient’s healthcare history over numerous doctor’s appointments and screenings.
  • Patients, not doctors or hospitals, keep track of their medical history in “personal health records.” The records are meant to help the patient manage their health, but they do not take the place of the medical records that doctors and hospitals keep.
  • Medical researchers can benefit significantly from the information contained in public health records. The Cancer Research Data Commons (CRDC) is a cloud-based data science platform developed by the National Cancer Institute that connects data analytics tools with data repositories storing genomic, proteomic, comparative oncology, imaging, and other types of data.

Progression in Knowledge and Skill

Soft skills are almost as crucial as credentials in the healthcare industry. To keep things functioning smoothly, you need to promote lifelong education. Healthcare data analysis can help pinpoint when and where your staff needs assistance by comparing overall performance with training data.

You can save more lives with the help of medical data analytics if everyone can adapt to the shifting environment.

3.  Real-Time Alerting Enhances Patient Engagement

Another essential feature that other healthcare data analytics types share is the ability to send real-time alerts. Clinical decision support (CDS) software analyzes patient records in real time, guiding doctors and nurses in their treatment recommendations.

But doctors would prefer that people stay away from hospitals if they can help. One of the hottest topics in business intelligence for 2021, this idea might form the basis of an entirely new approach. Patients’ health information will be continuously collected by wearables and uploaded to the cloud.

How Can Real-Time Alerting Operate between Patients and Healthcare Professionals?

Data will be made available to the public health database for socioeconomic comparison and to adjust delivery tactics. Administrators and caretakers will use complex tools to keep track of this flood of information and respond to any unsettling trends they uncover.

For instance, if a patient’s blood pressure suddenly spikes, the system will transmit a real-time signal to the doctor, who can immediately rush to the patient’s side and take appropriate steps to lower the pressure.

Strengthening Interaction between Doctors and Patients

Many people are interested in purchasing smart devices that can record their daily activities, such as how many steps they take, their heart rate, and even how they sleep. This data can be combined with other monitoring information to identify hidden health threats.

For example, some symptoms of heart disease include difficulty sleeping and a rapid heartbeat. Patients must actively monitor their health, and, in turn, health plans should offer incentives (such as rebates for wearers of fitness trackers).

New wearables also monitor particular health trends and upload that data to the cloud for doctors to check on. Patients with asthma or hypertension could utilize it to gain autonomy and reduce their doctor visits.

4.  Integrating Healthcare Data into Decision Making

Strategic planning in healthcare is made possible by using big data because of an improved understanding of patients’ preferences and behaviors. Care managers can check screening outcomes across populations to determine what prevents patients from getting care.

A Strategy for Limiting the Use of Emergency Rooms

Using big data analytics in healthcare is vital to save time, money, and effort. What if we told you that one woman went to the emergency room more than 900 times in three years? That’s not a hypothetical scenario; in Oakland, California, a woman with mental illness and substance misuse visited multiple hospitals daily.

The lack of shared medical records among local emergency rooms increased the expense to taxpayers and hospitals. It made it more difficult for this woman to seek proper care, exacerbating her original health problems.

Big Healthcare Data Solves Redundancy Problems by Sharing Medical History

Hospitals in Alameda County collaborated to develop PreManage ED, a system that allows emergency rooms to share patient information to avoid such future issues.

ER personnel can use this system to learn things like:

  • What tests have been performed on the patient at other facilities, and what have those results been?
  • In cases the patient has previously been assigned a case manager at another facility, it is unnecessary to appoint another case manager to the patient.
  • What recommendations have been made to the patient so clinicians can keep their message consistent?

Combining Large-Scale Data Methods with Medical Imaging

Due to the importance of medical imaging, about 600 million imaging operations are performed annually in the United States. Radiologists must study each image individually, and hospitals must retain them for several years, forcing manual analysis and storage costs.

In-House Radiology Department. According to Carestream, big data analytics in healthcare can revolutionize the interpretation of medical images by allowing doctors to quickly and accurately diagnose conditions based on numerical representations of pixelated patterns.

They suggest that in the future, radiologists may not even need to look at the images themselves, instead relying on computers to assess the results of examining and memorizing many more photos than any human being could hope to see in their whole lifetimes. The job description for radiologists, their training, and the abilities they need to succeed would all have to change.

5.  Efficient Methods of Managing Staff and Resources

Healthcare organizations can better manage their staffing needs and the quality of care by applying data analytics to candidate screening, hiring, onboarding, and retention. Despite an increasing shortage of trained medical personnel, healthcare providers must balance their needs to reduce spending, boost efficiency, and improve the lives of their patients.

Labor costs consume about 60% of hospital budgets, and with an ever-increasing need for qualified healthcare workers, salary and wage levels are only likely to rise further. Data analytics reduces the number of hours healthcare workers put in each day while enhancing the standard of care provided to patients and decreasing wait times for appointments.

Hawaii Pacific Health (HPH) Maintains Quality Healthcare with Cost-Effective, Data-Driven Management

By taking a data-driven approach to labor management, Hawaii Pacific Health (HPH), one of Hawaii’s largest healthcare systems, saved $2.2 million over 16 months without sacrificing the quality of care.

Computer-generated visual representations of labor usage, including real-time views of staffing and graphical representations of staff levels, have replaced HPH’s previous paper-based management system. The change allowed a better understanding of worker and team productivity and the cost-effectiveness of staffing decisions, cutting hospital labor expenses without compromising the quality of care or patient outcomes by adjusting staffing ratios.

Healthcare Data Not Only Saves Lives but Also Betters the Way of Living

Healthcare data has profoundly impacted providers’ ability to provide high-quality, timely, and cost-effective care. Yet, as more forms of data become available and new tools are developed to make the analytics results apparent and easy to obtain, the role of analyzing this data in bettering patient outcomes and healthcare systems continues to increase and expand.

To fully realize data analytics’ potential to revolutionize the healthcare sector, the sector must grasp how it can use technology to solve problems faced by healthcare providers. These problems include personnel recruitment and utilization, operational efficiencies, and improved patient experiences.

Patient-centered care begins with an understanding of those being cared for. The key to accessing this critical knowledge lies in data analytics. That’s why it not only saves patients’ lives but also finds a way of living a better one.

Adam Hansen
 

Adam is a part time journalist, entrepreneur, investor and father.